The above is a spectacular new NASA satellite image showing the infamous 'Spider Crater' in Western Australia :

"In this false-color image, the arid landscape appears in varying shades of crimson. Near the center of the image is the Spider, sunlight giving an oddly ghostlike appearance to the steep ridges that form its legs."

The structure of the crater, situated in almost inaccessible terrain, was for many years a mystery until the 1970s when "shatter cones" -- cone-shaped, grooved rocks known only to appear in craters left by meteor or asteroid impacts -- were discovered. The find led scientists to conclude the structure was that of an eroded impact area.

More on this here.

Detail :



WA's 'Spider Crater' has something of a geological twin on planet Mercury.

Book Wars : Howard Vs Costello

Biographer : "Howard Is This Automaton"

Costello The Messiah...No Wait, He's Not The Messiah

Former prime minister, John Howard, apparently has five publishers interested in his autobiography, but former treasurer Peter Costello has already got his deal done, the writing has begun and it is expected to briefly hog shelf space in bookstores from early October.

The betting, before the books are even completed, is that Costello will turn in the better tale, which will mostly be written by his father-in-law, Peter Coleman, a former editor of The Bulletin.

The hope is that the book's publication will mark the end of Costello's political career, instead of a new beginning. Why?

If Costello intends to take a run at leader of the Liberal Party (and really, why would he?), you would expect the book to go easy on Howard, on the Liberals in general, mock Labor generously and ramp up the potential of a victorious return to power for the Liberals, starting anywhere. That means, not a lot of sales outside the hard core ranks of Australian conservatives.

But if Costello is heading for the door (and really, why would he stay?) we might get a conservative rival to Mark Latham's spectacular napalming of Labor in The Latham Diaries, full of bite, bile and venom.

That is no doubt the hope of Costello's publisher, Melbourne University Press, and whatever newspaper will fork out $30,000 to $60,000 for the serialisation rights.

More here :

Peter Costello may finally take the top slot from his old boss John Howard in a battle of memoirs, according to a biographer of the former prime minister.

ANU academic Wayne Errington, who co-wrote last year's controversial John Winston Howard: The Biography, said Mr Costello was the more attractive prospect.

"Howard and Costello both gave us a lot of their time and, generally speaking, Costello was much more interesting," he said.

"He's more human. Howard is this automaton who is hugely focused and disciplined while Costello, and I know this is a terrible cliche, is definitely the bloke you'd rather have a beer with."

Interestingly, the writer of the Costello book, Peter Coleman, ripped into John Howard after the Liberal Party's election massacre.

"What was once seen as his gritty determination started to look like an almost animal egomania and he seemed to be blocking progress and regeneration, rather than advancing the cause," Mr Coleman said.

He claimed that Mr Howard destroyed Mr Costello's chance to be prime minister. "There is no doubt that this man of great promise and great ability was blocked by Howard's egomania," he said.

It'd be hard to imagine Coleman won't entrench those views, obviously shared with Peter Costello, in the new book. The publishers are clearly expecting this, and much, much more.

John Howard, eating his breakfast alone and reading the papers, as is his daily morning habit, must have a few seconds where he found it hard to swallow when he read the news of Costello's book.

What will he say about me? Howard must have wondered, What will he reveal?

Winter began early for Howard yesterday morning.


The best coverage on the surreal hyping of Peter Costello returning to lead the Liberal Party and the announcement of his book deal naturally comes from Andrew Bolt, the Murdoch paid Liberal Party propagandist, and talking points provider, who can't even rely on the Liberals to leak him early news of actual interest anymore.

This is fantastic stuff from Bolt. Hail! Costello The Messiah Returns!

Costello retains a lot of respect in the electorate, making him preferred as Liberal leader to Turnbull, who is still inexperienced, unwilling to take advice and an ideological work in progress.

A Costello/Turnbull team would give the Liberals terrific credibility...

Costello has to get over his past resentments and seize his future.

...the Liberals must en masse ask him to take over.

...the leadership is there for his asking. And truly, his party needs him.

What news that Bolt didn't know was coming could turn that rancid fluff into pure bogwater? This - Oh Wait, The Messiah's Not Returning And...He's Taking Cash From The Publisher of Mark Latham and Antony Lowenstein :

Costello might be about to burn bridges rather than build them, unless he resists the impulse to get square:

Melbourne University Publishing (MUP) today said it would publish Mr Costello’s memoirs of his 18-year political career.

But you can at least gather from this Costello isn’t going anywhere that will demand plenty of his time, if he’s settling down for a long write.

Absolute bollocks, but pure comedy gold.

Costello wouldn't get more than $50,000 for his biography (he's believed to be getting around $150,000) unless the publisher knew in advance that Costello was going to use the book to leave at least a mildly impressive trail of smoke-belching burning bridges in his wake, heartily embracing the opportunity to get square, in public, and well before Howard's own tome wheezes onto the shelves.


The best part of the 2007 federal election remains the moment when John Howard had declared defeat and announced he would back Peter Costello as the new Liberal Party leader, with Howard all but begging Costello to come up onto the stage and allow Howard to officially anoint him.

Cut to Peter Costello standing in the crowd, looking casual and pissed, grimly grinning his answer back to the man who had done so much to make his life a frustrating, humiliating existence : Not fucking likely, mate, not fucking likely.

Olympic Torch Anti-Freedom Farce Continues

Media Banned From Torch Relay Through Nation's Capital

Australia will get to see what the evening TV news is like in China during the Canberra leg of the fiasco-harassed Olympic torch relay on Thursday, after Beijing insisted on banning the general media from the event.

Channel Seven will have journalists there, Radio 2GB will have journalists there. But seeing as Channel Seven and Radio 2GB have exclusive broadcast rights for the 2008 Olympics, will we actually see any journalism?

If thousands of pro-China and pro-Tibet protesters come face to face in the streets of Canberra and get into it, how will it benefit either Channel Seven or Radio 2GB to give the violence the coverage it deserves? Will Channel Seven provide the rest of the media with Olympic Games-related rioting outside the nation's capital footage if they decide not to air it themselves? They are utterly compromised, and Beijing is insisting no other media be close enough to the actual torch relay to show what really happens.

Beijing can't stop the protests, but they can to, and apparently are being allowed, to limit the coverage :

Council for Civil Liberties national president Terry O'Gorman lammed the arrangements, saying there was a "clear conflict of interest" in allowing media companies with broadcast rights to the Games to produce most of the coverage.

"They've got an interest in promoting the Games and minimising any negative impact that the protests would have on the Games coverage," he said. A wider array of journalists, including from the print media, should be given access. "A picture in this case doesn't tell a thousand words; you need the words to tell the picture," he said.

How will the rest of Australia's corporate media respond to this crackdown on their freedom to cover history in their own country? Will they boycott the Olympics in protest? Not likely.


Another "wall of steel" and massive police deployment unfurls in an Australian city, with a promise from the prime minister himself of beatings from police for protesters who get out of line :

A great wall of steel has been erected along the entire Beijing Olympic torch relay route in Canberra, with the Prime Minister saying police would "come down like a ton of bricks" on protesters planning violent demonstrations.

Kevin Rudd's warning came as the cost of hosting Thursday's event doubled to almost $2 million.

"If any protesters, irrespective of their political point of view, engage in unruly, disorderly or violent behaviour, then the police will come down on them like a ton of bricks," Mr Rudd told the 7.30 Report last night.

A waist-high metal grille surrounded landmarks such as Parliament House, the National Art Gallery and the War Memorial.

"It's quite a blow to the innocence of our city but we must do it," the ACT Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope.

The Australian torch relay organiser, Ted Quinlan, could not rule out smuggling the torch on to a bus if protests in Canberra got out of control. "The flame has to be mobile," he said. "Any major disruption could kill it."

The Olympic torch is like a shark now, is it? It has to keep moving or it will die?

There is clearly a concerted effort by Olympic organisers in Australia and Beijing to confuse the public over just how involved the infamous blue-tracksuit wearing Chinese paramilitary will be during the Olympic torch relay in Canberra.

China is sending 30 of these official "flame attendants" to Canberra, and we are told they will follow the torch, in a bus, with at least one riding directly behind the relay runners on an ACT police motorbike.

The story, for now, is that the Chinese paramilitary will only come off the bus when the torch is handed from one relay participant to another, there is a lot of re-lighting to be done. But the torch changes hands about every 200 metres. Right. So every two hundred or so metres on the sixteen kilometre route, the bus will stop, the paramilitary will file off, stand around, attend to the flame and then it's back on the bus again, for another few seconds of travel.

They're going to get on and off the bus around 70 or 80 times, are they?

Of course they're going to be running with the torch, when it's not being transported on the bus that is. There will also be a solid turn out of Chinese security agents and videographers amongst the pro-Tibet protesters. Every single one of them have their image and movements captured by Chinese intelligence and immediately databased in Beijing.

The ACT and federal police, at least, do sound like they won't be putting up with any of the scenes in London and other city tours of the torch where the Chinese paramilitary took a front line role in violently dealing with protesters.

Police claim they will charge any foreign security agent who lays a hand on a protester. That's their job.

But if only Channel Seven and a radio station are allowed to directly witness what is actually going on inside the moving flesh wall of security, how will we know our police are keeping their word?

Let's hope it all goes down peacefully.

China Sends 30 Paramilitary To Guard Olympic Torch In Canberra

Police Threaten To Arrest Any Paramilitary Who Lays A Hand On Australian Protesters

A country quietly, steadily installing police state apparatus will, they claim, be protecting its people from an advanced police state security team, whose Quest For Fire-like mission is to keep a flame lit, while pro-Communist Capitalism and pro-democracy activists shout support and abuse at the flame as it's passed from one running person to another in the recreation of a sports-related ritual popularised by the Nazi German government in 1936.

The Olympic Torch relay in Canberra later this week has the makings of an utterly surreal, but hopefully not violent, mega-spectacle of the most bizarre kind :

Chinese officials have been warned their paramilitary "flame attendants" will be arrested and hauled away if they touch one of our citizens during the Australian leg of the torch relay.

Police are still keen to ban the attendants from escorting the flame at all.

Instead, runners will be protected by six Australian Federal Police officers: two behind; two alongside and two in front.

"The federal police have told the Chinese Embassy that the flame attendants will not have a security role," a source close to the negotiations said.

"They can't touch any member of the Australian public and if they do they will be arrested and charged under Australian law."

So 30 highly trained Chinese paramilitary will supposedly ride in a vehicle near the flame, while six Australian Federal Police provide running security, but should any of the foreign paramilitary engage in thuggish behaviour with a pro-democracy protester, the police will cause a (positive) international incident by arresting the foreign government paramilitary, who will probably then claim diplomatic immunity.

2008 has already proven to be an extremely weird year, and it's only going to get weirder from here on in.

Wait until you see the 'One World/Same World' Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, and the incandescent rage from Chinese officials at the numerous pro-Tibet protests from athletes, and media.

Doctor Says Stop Terrorism And Criminal Networks By Legalising All Drug Use

In a summit full of ideas...well, 100 or so, including a few new ones, this idea was too shocking, too unimaginable for most to even blink at :

The use of dangerous, addictive drugs should be decriminalised, a medical expert says.

Prison doctor Wendell Rosevear wants Australian-made heroin to be given to addicts in government-sanctioned doses by 2020.

In an idea slammed by family groups, he used Kevin Rudd's 2020 Summit to call for all drugs to be legalised.

The Queensland GP said keeping drugs illegal simply handed money to terrorists and criminals.

"I think it would be better to actually sell the opium that we grow in Tasmania and undercut the profits (of illegal drugs)," he said.

"Now, the profit margin is about 3000 per cent, from the farms to the street."

Dr Rosevear, who has 30 years' experience working in the jail system, wants safe and precise doses of drugs made available to users.

"People are taking unknown doses of unknown drugs from unknown sources, and they overdose and they die," he said.

Dr Rosevear said the change should apply to all drugs, including ecstasy, ice and marijuana.

Legalising all drugs is clearly insane.

The fallout from such a move would be catastrophic, and wide reaching.

Thousands of gangsters, distributors, street dealers and backyard chemists would be out of work, as the price of drugs plummet. Break and enters and car theft would decrease so dramatically that insurance companies would have trouble convincing people that they really need to insure everything in their homes, particularly their wall TVs.

And what about the alcohol industry? Most bartenders will tell you that stoned people drink less booze than the punters who walk in straight, and laser-eyed 20 years old on ecstasy don't drink any booze at all.

The alcohol industry would find its monopoly as legal non-pharmaceutical drug supplier to the nation being stripped away by real competition.

In a free market where most of the drugs now illegal were available to purchase, or consume in a legal venue, alcohol would have a hard time competing. Sales would plummet.

Imagine if one violent boozer, who medicated himself with alcohol, instead became a casual pot smoker? Imagine if 50,00 violent boozers ate so many hash-soaked cookies, instead of 20 schooners, every Friday and Saturday night that the only physical abuse they unleashed was on the XBox?

Ice is clearly nasty crap, illegal or legal. But a few thousand doctors, accountants and lawyers would sleep easier if they knew they could get a monthly prescription for morphine every month from their doctor.

It won't happen. Australians will instead have to make do with brain and society decaying levels of alcoholism, legal speed for attention problems and cheap, day melting doses of over the counter codeine from the local pharmacy.

The majority of Australians will continue to dose themselves almost every day with drugs, soft and hard drugs, because they want to alter their reality, or alter the way they feel, or the way they feel about themselves.

Australians enjoy getting high, and low, via plants, fermentation and chemicals, but the most important question remains how best to limit the addictions and the damage.

It's 2020, And This Is Your Life

Well, it's May 19, 2020, and Australia is a very different country to the far more chaotic nation we knew back in 2008 when World Government President Kevin Rudd, then prime minister, drew together 1000 of the "best and brightest" minds to "shake the trees" and dream up a better tomorrow. This tomorrow, today, here in 2020.

It's Whitlam Day today and I woke up at 5am. I had no choice. Julia Gillard's voice blasted into the room, well every room, in every home, in every town, city and ecoville, to make sure none of us get up late or leave the house still sleepy. They had to turn down the standard volume after all those carbon credit earning suicides, so her voice doesn't always wake me right up.

I haven't paid my KevNet bill so the only free tele available while I'm eating my raw vegetable breakfast was old Kevin Rudd speeches on the KBC (Kevin Broadcasting Commission). I've already seen every speech he ever gave twelve or eighteen times each back in high school, when I was completing my Higher Kevin Certificate, so I read The Daily Kevin instead while I eat.

I've been saving up, so for lunch I'm going to treat myself to a $70 McDonalds Hamburger, with fries. I'll have to put up with the compulsory eduvid on why obese people are stealing our children's future but the hamburger's made from a cow that wanted to die, so it should still taste pretty good.

I'm still sleepy when I climb nine stories down the zero emission rope ladder from my apartment to the grass covered street. I would have a cigarette to wake up a bit more, while waiting for the multicycle (already loaded with ten of my neighbours) to arrive, but cigarettes were banned in 2009. Banning cigarettes was one of the most popular Ideas from the 2020 Conference amongst non-smokers. It doesn't matter of course, because cocaine, Kevoin and nano-speed is legal, and the prisons are only crowded now with lying politicians and the last of the Boltist conservatives rounded up by the first Australian republic president John Faulkner in 2014.

Anyone under 50 needs lots of nano-speed just to get all the work done. There's six million Baby Boomers to support. Most of them live as Grey Howards endlessly circling the country on Highway One. They refuse to work ("I'm 77 years old and I'm not going to farm carrots!"), and they refuse to die, even when told it is a "positive experience not to be feared", plus they keep cloning themselves.

I have a busy morning. I have to go to the Wellness Centre for my compulsory health test. It's an hour off work, but I do get paid for completing the test. Ten Carbons means for four hours I won't have to use pedal power to watch HoloTele tonight. There's a Kevin Vs Kevin debate from the 2012 election I haven't seen all sixteen hours of yet, and I'm not allowed to miss it.

I also have to find time in the afternoon to go visit my girlfriend. She's been suffering eco-anxiety (or Ecty as it's known in psychiatric circles) for a decade, but she had a total breakdown last month when state media reported that seven polar bears were found still swimming in the Russian Arctic two years after the final sliver of ice had melted up there. I thought the ice was probably going to melt anyway, eventually, and it was a bit of a miracle, maybe even of some religious significance, that the polar bears had survived for so long.

But as soon as I thought that, the alarm sounded (Julia Gillard laughing) and everyone in our building knew that I had both doubted global warming and viewed the polar bear tragedy as something other than a tragedy. I was named and shamed.

It was too much for my girlfriend. I was fined 100 Carbons and I was stripped of my citizenship. She checked into a More Than Wellness Centre. They said her recovery will be long, free and green.

It was my first major envirocrime, but that means next week I have to go to the We Owe Nature BigTime, You Bastard Centre and prove my environment-climate friendliness. If I fail I get sent to Flannery, the geothermal town in outback South Australia, where I will be re-educated for two months. Having to watch all those Flannery eduvids where he shouts how right he and Rupert Murdoch were on the dire, catastrophic changes of climate change might be harsh, but anything is better than going to prison and having to share a cell with all those lying politicians and those weirdo conservatives, with their endless quoting from the Holy Timran and their futile demands for KBC to air their bizarre and now mostly illegal ideas.

By the time I get to work, they should have unloaded the new supply of butcher's paper. We ran short last week and had to get six people on the treadmills to power a pre-Rudd era style PowerPoint presentation. We're having a What A Good Idea! meeting before lunch and we have to write our ideas on the butcher's paper and hold them over our heads to find others who agree with our ideas.

Tomorrow from here in the year 2020 I'll discuss my job, the environment, why you can now visit the beach and the Blue Mountains at the same time and how the shape of Peter Garrett's magnificent head came to inspire the design for the base-load producing solar panels that power this nation.

Sources :

2020 Summit : Death "The Positive Experience"

Jail Lying Politicians, Yes, Jail Them

'Vision For The Future', Sydney Morning Herald

Sunday Telegraph : "There Was Something Uplifting About Witnessing Such (An) Impressive Group Of Australians."

Annabel Crabb : The Great Butcher's Paper Sacrifice

ED Day : 'The End' Is Nigh

I'm a few days, maybe a week, away from The End of my online serialised novel, ED Day : Dead Sydney.

While I've always had a vague idea of how I believed the story would end, not writing to an outline means I've often been surprised at how the tale has turned out, chapter by chapter.

For example, (spoiler alert), the sniper murders of three key characters, a few chapters ago, wasn't something I planned, or even wrote in my mind. I didn't want that to happen to these people. I sat there, reading the words that appeared on the screen as they were slaughtered, as though I was reading the work of somebody else. A very strange experience indeed.

Most of the latest chapter now online, likewise, fell out of the brain dump in one fast 3am writing session after I tossed the chapter I had already written, and rewritten, and relentlessly polished until it was flat, sterile, fucking boring.

Where this new chapter leads the last part of the novel (maybe two more chapters) is not something I planned, or even now want to happen to these characters who have become so real to me in the past year. But I know if I delete this chapter and rewrite it to fit with how I originally thought this story would end, my brain will violently punish me by exploding a few blood vessels. And if I did slump dead onto the keyboard before I reach The End, there's about one or two hundred regular readers who I'm sure would dig me up to try and find out how it all ends.

This has been such a bizarre writing experience. I used to need drugs to trip myself out this much.

An excerpt from the latest chapter of ED Day : Dead Sydney :

There’s nobody to put out fires that big, and we don’t have the water to spare even if we had a volunteer firemen’s unit to activate.

Bookman had warned of all this. The destruction of our written history and culture, who we are, the story of how we got here, how we became a nation.

Bookman told me last week that 12 bookshops he knew of had been torched or burned, including antique shops loaded with rare books and letters. He made me promise him that if anything ever happened to him that I'd guard the Mitchell and State libraries with my life. I failed him. It's all gone.

I see it all now, what is happening here. We have a dangerous and destructive enemy, and this enemy is at war against us, the survivors of ED Day. They want to strip us of our history, and break us down, make us feel lost and helpless and cut off from our culture, who we are, where we came from.

They're winning.

You can read the rest of the latest chapter here. And feel free to leave a comment, as critical as you like (but make it a bit more insightful than "This Sux", okay?)

If you're not already reading ED Day, you can start from Chapter One here.

Australian Researchers Discover Fun, Stress Relieving New Way To Fight Cancer

I look forward to seeing the Cancer Council's public awareness ads promoting this method of preventing prostate cancer :

Men could reduce their risk of developing prostate cancer through regular masturbation, researchers suggest. They say cancer-causing chemicals could build up in the prostate if men do not ejaculate regularly.

Australian researchers questioned over 1,000 men who had developed prostate cancer and 1,250 who had not about their sexual habits. They found those who had ejaculated the most between the ages of 20 and 50 were the least likely to develop the cancer. The protective effect was greatest while the men were in their 20s.

Men who ejaculated more than five times a week were a third less likely to develop prostate cancer later in life.

Red wine, dark chocolate, some sunshine, lots of sleep, cannabis cookies and now masturbation. Preventing cancer has never been so much fun.

Go Here For More On This

Key Terror Trial Witness Heard Birds Telling Him Their Problems

It's reassuring to see Australia's largest trial of suspected terrorists, you know the ones who are so allegedly dangerous they had to be separated from their wives and children for years and held in a Supermax Victorian prison, hasn't descended into a complete and total farce :

The key witness in Australia's biggest terrorist trial lived a life of luxury, communicated with birds and saw a she-devil, a court heard yesterday.

The witness, Izzydeen Atik of Newport, told the court on Tuesday the group's alleged leader, Abdul Nacer Benbrika, told him the group planned to attack the 2005 AFL grand final at the MCG and Melbourne's Crown Casino during the 2006 Grand Prix.

Mr Atik is a key witness in the trial of 12 men accused of being members of a terrorist organisation. All have pleaded not guilty.

Remy van de Wiel, QC, a lawyer for Benbrika, told the court of a psychiatric report in 2002 in which Mr Atik claimed that birds often told him their problems.

"If you spend a day with me you will see the birds follow me and talk to me," Mr Atik told the psychiatrist who compiled the report.

Mr van de Wiel told the court the report quoted Mr Atik as saying: "I see another one, a girl, not human, a devil. She says she loves me [and] she won't let me have a relationship. She scares me."

And it gets worse.

The police raids in November, 2005, that led to the arrests of the men now on trial just happened to coincide with the introduction of the Australian Anti-Terrorism Act 2005,

Anti-Bogan Revolt

Residents in a Sydney suburb aren't too happy with the name of their street, Bogan Place, and they want it changed :

Tired of being smeared because of their address, 12 of the street's 16 residents have banded together to beg their council for a name change.

"The connotations associated with the word bogan are becoming increasingly ruder," resident Jim Patrick, a computer technician who works from home, said.

"When I give people my business card the reactions are amazing. People hit me and tell me I cannot be serious."

Self-confessed bogan, mayor Nick Ebbeck, said it was the first time the council had been asked to rename a street because it was offensive.

Mr Ebbeck said the constant theft of the sign was a drain on council coffers.

"It costs $500 per sign to replace including the labour and the template and it's not like they're mass producing Bogan Place. We are losing this one on a near monthly basis. It's unbelievable."

The residents of Bogan Street, Seven Hills are yet to petition their council for a name change. Nor have the residents of an entire NSW suburb called, wow, BOGAN GATE raised a fuss.

How's this for an address :

Bogan Gate Public School, Bogan St, Bogan Gate, NSW.

Nor are the residents of Bogan Place, Kaleen, ACT, or Bogan Street, Bogan Lane, Bogan Close, Bogan Road, all over Australia, demanding their streets be renamed. Though it appears Bogan dwellers in other states and territories also have to put up with the disappearance of their street signs.

I always thought Bongalong Road was the most stolen street sign in Australia.

The activist residents of Bogan Place, Wahroonga, should come clean about why they want the name change.

What do they Bogan Place renamed as?

Rain Forest Close.

Why?

Very likely because some local real estate agent has told them their properties are worth more if they have a 'leafy' street name.

Bolt : My Readers Are A Pack Of Homophobic Arseholes

Dingbat Andrew Bolt pretends he never knew that a fat slice of his blog's readership are bigoted fuckwads. He posts on the decision Victorian schools to allow students to take gay partners to the formal dance, and gets bombarded with slabs of bile and disgust :

Some of the people against this idea should be ashamed of the way they express their opinions in comments below. Any young gays reading this would be horrified and intimidated by such gleeful mockery and hatred. Could the worst offenders reconsider the way they’ve expressed themselves, and post a clarification or even, dare I hope, an apology?

Yes, I'm sure there are just oodles of young, gay Australian conservatives reading Bolt's blog everyday. You know, all those pro-war, pro-Howard, anti-gay marriage, anti-gay rights, young gay men.

Bolt's bulb is so dim he doesn't even realise his blog is now Australia's number one clearing house for bigotry and intolerance.

Perhaps Bolt should inform his commenters that various police agencies and ASIO data-mine his site and build profiles of his most regular, hate-filled commenters. Unless, of course, Bolt is trying to draw them out. Nobody is anonymous on the internet anymore, as Orwellian as that is.

When the big push begins in Australia to force blogs to only publish comments by registered readers ('licensed' readers is probably closer to the mark), and the push will begin this year, comments found on Bolt's blog will be part of the 'Look At All This Filth And Hatred' marketing campaign by politicians to get it done.

UPDATE - Some examples of the Bolt Readers Revolt, and the downright revolting :

"...openly allowing it certainly runs the risk of pedophiles lurking."

"Good God, Andrew, I know you’re agnostic, but you’ve lost your marbles
here."

"If you are born gay then you must also be born a paedophile."

"It is honorable of you to defend homosexuality because you have gay friends. How about defending the rights of others to reject it?"

"What about those boys who have meaningful desire for animals or prefer polygamous relationships? Why does homosexuality convey a superior moral stance
over bestiality, polygamy, necrophilia or polyamorism?"

"Andrew Bolt, you have clearly lost the plot on this one. No ‘conservative’ should ever encourage such a destructive assault against traditional, mainstream values. I cannot believe you have supported something as ill conceived as this in the name of ‘tolerance.’"

"If you honestly believe that such garbage should be allowed, you are about as far removed from any genuine conservative cause as the ‘progressives’ who openly proclaim their desire to dismantle our mainstream culture. Why Mr Bolt has sided with them on this one I cannot fathom."

"If homosexuality is quite acceptable, why isn’t people having sex with children, their siblings, their father, their mother or animals acceptable? From what or where do you derive your moral baseline?"

"Gotta laugh at the way the media keep on and on about these extreme minority perversions. “If we keep repeating it over and over people will start to think it is normal and acceptable”. How about a new slogan Andrew “Homosexual - so normal everybody should be one”. Could work for the incestuous couple too."

"...for someone who is supposedly a right wing conservative, it doesn’t make much sense to push the left’s agenda of forcing beliefs upon those who do not agree. Tolerance also means you respect the beliefs of those who are less inclusive."

"...so what is your position on other relationships like paedophiles with consenting children, mutually consenting bestiality and consenting incestuous couples? Is it the same?"

Mutually consenting bestiality, eh? Rightio!

"The eventual outcome is obvious, they wish to be seen as “normal”. Well I can tell them right now they are not, and never will be."

"Well i think kids that grow up in a gay relationship is wrong on the kids ,how can you subject the kids to something like that its not normal and its not right but then again krudd is leading by example with gays in government making decisions for families."

"We do not do our young people any service by approving and encouraging a sexually immoral lifestyle, any more than we help our young people by encouraging their passions for alcohol, drugs, tobacco, gambling and violence. We should be helping our young people to live in a way that is healthy and fulfilling."

It'd be fascinating to find out how many of these supposedly hardcore conservatives would drop their support for the Liberal Party if they learned that the ranks of Howard's government, and the current opposition, is dotted with homosexuals and bisexuals.

Howard's Helping/Non-Helping Hand

Back home after his trip to the United States to collect six figures worth of Iraq War blood money from his NeoCon backers, former prime minister John Howard has offered a "helping hand" to demoralised, PTSD-crippled Liberals.

But did Howard offer a "helping hand" to temporary Liberal leader Brendan "I'm Going Nowhere..." Nelson?

Sydney's Daily Telegraph says yes, he did :

Howard Offers To Help Embattled Nelson

FORMER prime minister John Howard says he is willing to help the Liberal Party and its embattled leader Brendan Nelson with the "difficult job" of being in opposition.

But The Australian newspaper says no, he didn't :

Howard Slow To Offer Helping Hand

JOHN Howard helped the Liberal Party raise much-needed funds at a dinner thrown in his honour in Brisbane last night, but there was no helping hand for his successor, Brendan Nelson, as he battles through a fierce bout of leadership speculation.

The Sydney Morning Herald offers up this Howard pearler from the speech :

(Howard admitted) his diplomacy needed work. Asked at a function at the George H. W. Bush presidential library in Texas to name his top three achievements, he started with gun control.

No-one in the Texas audience clapped.

Howard won't offer his total support for Brendan Nelson because he probably believes that if the chaos, back-stabbing and plunging poll numbers for Nelson and the Liberals continue, he just might get another shot at running for prime minister. Just like his hero Menzies.

He won't take the offer (well,probably not), but he sure is going to get a chub when they ask him, or when the rumours begin that Howard might be making a return to politics.

UPDATE : The Australian lead editorial sinks a hilariously righteous boot into Howard for being too conservative and not embracing the "symbolism" that is supposedly making Rudd so popular right now :

...the popularity of the Prime Minister and Labor is going through the roof because it has taken a whole lot of easy symbolic actions that were easy to identify years ago. Mr Howard's long-standing refusal to offer an apology to the Stolen Generations or sign the Kyoto Protocol may have limited his ability to act. A change of heart by Mr Howard on these issues may have been seen by voters as a sign of political desperation. But given the opportunity, Mr Costello may have been able to freshen up the image of conservative forces to reflect the expectations of modern Australia and take some of the easy benefits now being showered on Mr Rudd.

With Brendan Nelson struggling to get out of single figures in the opinion polls, what does this say about the long-term assessment of the Howard years? That by being too conservative and refusing to reflect contemporary views, Mr Howard has destroyed the conservative side he served.

The Australian rails on Howard for being too conservative....what more needs to be said?

Not Just Friends, But True Friends

Australian China scholar Geremie Barnie's views on PM Rudd's dealings with China during his visit last week were some of the more insightful, and went a long way to explaining Rudd's motives behind lightly, but significantly, chastising the Chinese regime over Tibet and what exactly he meant when he talked about "friends", "friendship" and particularly "true friends".

The Washington Post picked up on Barnie's comments, and asked if Kevin Rudd is the West's "new secret weapon in dealing with China" :

Rudd's brilliance in the speech involves turning the Chinese term "friend" on its head. Friend (pengyou in Chinese) and frienship (youyi) are two of the most distorted concepts in modern China culture. In modern China, a friend is someone who will do you favors and who expects favors in return. A "foreign friend" is someone the Chinese party-state expects will carry water for them and NEVER criticize them.

"To be a friend of China, the Chinese people, the party-state or, in the reform period, even a mainland business partner," Barme writes, "the foreigner is often expected to stomach unpalatable situations, and keep silent in the face of egregious behaviour. A friend of China might enjoy the privilege of offering the occasional word of caution in private; in the public arena he or she is expected to have the good sense and courtesy to be 'objective.' that is to toe the line, whatever that happens to be. The concept of 'friendship' thus degenerates into little more than an effective tool for emotional blackmail and enforced complicity."

So what did Rudd do? He went back -- way back -- into Chinese history, to the 7th century AD, and used another word for friendship (zhengyou).

"A true friend," Rudd said, "is one who can be a zhengyou, that is a partner who sees beyond immediate benefit to the broader and firm basis for continuing, profound and sincere friendship."

"Rudd's tactic," Barme wrote, "was to deftly sidestep the vice-like embrace of [the current] model of friendship by substituting another.

"A strong relationship, and a true friendship," he told the students, "are built on the ability to engage in a direct, frank and ongoing dialogue about our fundamental interests and future vision."

This type of engagement could be a model for how the West interacts with China.

Bong Banning Fascists Pigs, Man

Hard plastic fruit juice and sports drinks bottles will soon see a sharp rise in sales in South Australia. At the same time, garden hoses left temptingly overnight in front yards will, each weekend, become a few inches shorter.

From the Adelaide Advertiser :

The State Government last night passed tough new laws so anyone selling cannabis bongs or drug implements will face fines of up to $50,000 or two years in jail.

One local drug expert, pharmacology associate professor Rodney Irvine, said users will seek other ways to inhale smoke and that could be more dangerous.

"When you close one loophole another one emerges, a different pattern of use emerges," he said

"They'll make them out of anything, obviously."

Vegemite jars, Coke cans, motor oil containers, fruit juice bottles, apples...

"I would say that there's a possibility those alternative homemade ones will have some problems."

Of course, getting a tight seal on a homemade bong is always difficult, particularly if you're an inexperienced teenager putting one together down the side of the family house, in the dark, with a mate holding the flashlight.

Dr Irvine breaks through the anti-bong hatred with a claim you don't even hear falling from the lips of health professionals :

Dr Irvine said smoking through a bong or water pipe was probably slightly less dangerous than using joints or pipes.

"Intuitively, I would say that smoking anything through a water pipe is a better option than smoking it in a joint or a spliff," he said.

"If you're smoking tobacco through a water pipe you've got cooler smoke. If there's cooler smoke, there are less volatile substances, therefore less tar."

Unfortunately, Dr Irvine didn't get a chance to air his opinions regarding the smoke temperature of The Bucket as an alternative to the "spliff."

Many cannabis smokers said they would simply make their own pipes from household goods.

The South Australian Attorney General seems proud that his government has found the time to take hard action against one of the true evils of society.

"The Rann Labor Government has banned the bong,'' he said.

Until now, courts had to establish, beyond reasonable doubt, that the person in possession of the equipment intended to use it in connection with preparing or consuming an illegal drug.

A young man is caught by police with a bong in one hand, a lighter in the other, and some toxic smell hydro stuffed into the cone. The cop asks, "Are you about to smoke that illegal drug?" The young man answers, "Not now."

Now the bong has been banned, South Australia will be free of serial killers, incest families and body-in-a-barrelers.

The online comment forum that ran with this story is one of the most honest and funny debates about the reality of dope smoking in Australia you'll ever see, with lots of jokes about shortened garden hoses of course.

I'm Impressed, Your Journalists Are Like Frightened Sheep

Annabel Crabb wonders if Kevin "Total Control" Rudd privately oohs a little awe at how China keeps its media in check :

For publicity-conscious prime ministers (and which of them isn't?), repression really does take the legwork out of media management. Forget the endless round of wheedling, bullying, placating, cajoling and hand-holding that constitutes modern spin.

The whiff of "How would you like your entire family to go to jail?" is so much neater and more efficient, don't you think?

Imagine the thrill of simply running a red pen through anything that might have the effect of dimming your aura of brilliance! Within seconds, your shickered rampage through the fleshpots of New York becomes a beard-stroking mission to the United Nations.

Footage of your unfortunate earwax excavations disappears without a trace from the internet, replaced by endless video hours of troop inspection, and tiny children presenting you reverently with stuffed pandas.

Rudd doesn't have to worry about putting to use any media repression tricks he might pick up in China just yet, or the ones he didn't already know. For now, most of the major journalists seem to be firmly on Rudd's side.

That will change when the budget and the new opposition leader, Malcolm Turnbull, reset the media focus for the rest of 2008 to something with more claws and blood.

Super Fairy Penguin Survives Oil Spill, Doubles Life Span

A fairy penguin from a Tasmanian colony decimated by an oil spill 13 years ago has astounded experts by clocking up double the average living years of its kind, and returning to the scene of the disaster to die.

From The World Today :

Fairy, or little penguins, usually only live for six years but this one lived for more than 14 before it died.

The discovery of the penguin's body has delighted the scientist who plucked him from an oil slick in 1995.

Delighted? Fairy penguin scientists are hard men.

The male penguin was already an adult in 1995 when the bulk carrier the Iron Baron ran aground on the North Tasmanian coast spilling 325 tonnes of fuel oil.

Between 10,000 and 20,000 fairy penguins were killed by the oil slick.

Nick Mooney was the first biologist on the scene of the oil spill.

NICK MOONEY: It's fantastic to know that what we did worked. We studied them for some time after so we knew there was the recovery of the colonies. Birds came back, did some breeding. There was a slowdown in breeding because the whole process with oiling can damage the kidney and liver somewhat but it is fantastic to know that the birds are more or less living normal lives well after that oil spill.

Mr Mooney says the fact the fairy penguin lived for so long shows the value of rescuing birds from oil spills and just how tough the little penguins can be.

Don't tell Exxon. They'll use this information to claim that oil spills are actually quite good for fairy penguins, and really big oil spills have been known to double the lifespan of the cute little birds.

Murdoch Media Promotes Protests, Boycotts, Civil Disobedience

China's human rights record, for Tibetans, and millions more of its own people, is appalling, and hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Australian coal sales is not reason enough to blind eye how China deals with pro-democracy advocates and dissenters. China's repressive regime and enthusiasm for human executions should have ruled it out of even being considered as a host city for the Olympic Games.

The Greens, more than any other political party in Australia, have been telling us this for years.

All pressure on China to shape up is positive, but it's still extremely strange to see anti-China boycotts, protests, civil disobedience and placard-waving-at-the-torch-relay being so heavily promoted by Rupert Murdoch's two biggest selling Australian newspapers.

From the Daily Telegraph today :



From Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun today :



Andrew Bolt is still to acknowledge that much of the philosophy he now eagerly espouses on China's human rights trampling has been a policy staple of The Greens, through leader Bob Brown.



As Anonymous Lefty points out, Murdoch newspapers also recently championed another policy staple of The Greens.


Here's how the Howard government dealt with China on human rights :

....June 28th, 2005...the Federal Government has come under fire for failing to question Chinese officials about claims that Chinese agents have persecuted political dissidents in Australia.

According to the report, at an annual and closed "human rights dialogue" on Monday, Australian officials did not raise allegations that the Chinese Government had persecuted

...the Foreign Affairs Department official who led the talks, said it was "not the forum" for tackling the allegations.

The report stated that the failure to raise the claims have fuelled accusations that Australia is taking a "softly softly" approach on human rights to keep good relations with China.

....yesterday reports emerged that Australia had refused to join "secret" US-led talks to discuss China's expanding role in the world, for fear of offending China.

Bob Brown from the Greens party accused the Australian Government of being cowardly.

Despite claims by Boltoids and desperate Liberals that Kevin Rudd would cower before China, he appears to be willing to tell China their human rights record is bogus, that Australia won't be bullied, and that our resources are not completely for sale :

Kevin Rudd has warned the Chinese Government he will "defend the Australian national interest" amid speculation that China is planning a stockmarket raid on resources giant BHP Billiton.

As Australian mining industry doyen Hugh Morgan warned China's move on BHP would "misfire" if the strategy was designed to secure assets for the resource-hungry nation, the Prime Minister made it clear in Beijing he would ensure all investments and takeovers of consequence in Australia would be examined.

Mr Rudd pointed to China's tough restrictions on foreign investment, and offered no sign of changes to Australia's foreign investment rules, which have prevented Chinese expansion into Australian interests.

....Mr Rudd said his job "as Prime Minister is to defend the Australian national interest and the Australian national economic interest, and I make no apologies for that while I'm here or elsewhere in the world".

"Australia is an open market when it comes to foreign investment and we have a history of depending on foreign investment," he said, adding: "We have always had the proper regulations to examine and advise on projects of consequence."

Rudd is going to lose a big chunk of his overwhelming support from the Australian public if he even appears to be backing down in his dealings with China in the weeks and months ahead.

Such pressure on China, particularly if the leaders of Australia, France and the US boycott the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, will be vital in letting them know they can't be a part of the larger democratic world when they block proper elections and brutalise their own people and think they should not have to answer for it.

Rupert Murdoch lost about a billion dollars and a decade trying to sew up China's vast TV audience, and failed to nail it, and the Chinese government is making life difficult again by refusing to let Murdoch's MySpace snare a large, independent and more profitable share of China's social networking market.

Murdoch's newspapers are going to hammer China all the way to the Olympics.

Hemp Nation



When Captain Cook first explored the south coast of Australia, more than 230 years ago, he envisioned the rolling meadows north of Newcastle covered with hemp plantations.

More than 60 years after large scale hemp plantations were abandoned at the end of World War 2, hemp is set to return to New South Wales farms on an industrial scale. And there's billions to be made, and new manufacturing industries to be spawned.

Better late than never :

The NSW Government has turned over a new leaf after decades of opposing commercial cannabis, revealing plans for a new scheme to grow the plant on an industrial scale.

It will introduce legislation in weeks to allow farms to grow hemp, the fibres and oil of which can be used in food and clothes, biofuels and skin-care products.

The state's first legal hemp crop has been approved by police and will contain only tiny amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive compound that some people smoke for recreation. It will be planted later this year, with farmers no longer needing their licences to be approved by the NSW Health Department.

"Industrial hemp fibre produced here in NSW could pave the way for the establishment of a new viable industry that creates and sells textiles, cloth and building products made from locally grown industrial hemp," said the Primary Industries Minister, Ian Macdonald, who will oversee the licences for the new crop.

"There is growing support from the agricultural sector for the development of such a new industry. This is a direct result of the environmentally friendly nature of industrial hemp and a perceived interest for hemp products in the market."

Trials in the state's west had yielded 10 to 12 tonnes of dry stem per hectare, which was similar to yields reported from crops in other states and in Europe, Mr Macdonald said.

Some farming groups cautiously welcomed the move, although the National Farmers Federation said it was not aware of large numbers of farmers clamouring to grow hemp.

"If it meets all the safety and health requirements, then farmers should have the option of growing whatever crops that best fits their business," Ben Fargher, the federation's chief executive officer, said. "There are farmers who look for innovative specialist crops, and this may fit that category."

Only a tiny slice of what hemp can be used for :

• As a cloth, hemp is softer, warmer, and more water resistant than cotton, and commands much higher prices. The original Levi Jeans were made from hemp.
  
• The majority of the world's books were printed on hemp paper until the 20th Century. Banknotes are still printed on hemp paper.
• Hemp can produce from two to four times as much fibre per hectare as woodchipping.
• A hemp paper industry is labour intensive rather than being capital intensive like woodchip. This means more jobs. Woodchips sell for $60/ton. Hemp pulp sells for $400 per ton for low grade pulp, and up to $1500 for organosolv, the highest grade.
• 200,000 hectares of hemp could replace Australia's woodchip exports industry - (the woodchip industry) is subsidised by the taxpayers to the rate of $300 million.
• Cannabis hemp makes the strongest particle board with far greater durability than any woodchip source.

Hemp seed is also one of the most nutritious food sources in the world. Hemp seed is stuffed full of Omega-3 and protein. Absurdly, you can legally buy hemp seed to feed to your pets in New South Wales, but it's illegal to buy it for your own consumption.

Hemp oil also makes for one hell of a biofuel, without causing corn and sugar shortages, and hemp can also be used to brew up some damn fine beer.

South Australia, Queensland and Victoria are also expected to follow New South Wales' lead and unveil their plans for their own new hemp industries in the coming months.

Hempallujah!

Rough Estimate

It's refreshing to see that police try to play down the number of protesters, even when it's the police doing the protesting :

It's common for police estimates of demonstration numbers to vary widely from the figures put out by the organisers. But in Victoria today, it was police versus police when it came to estimating the numbers at a march on Parliament.

Renegade union chief Paul Mullett led the rally. He believes there were about 3,000 there. The Police Command puts the number at closer to 1,500.

Although 1500 to 3000 police protested peacefully for better pay and work conditions, there was no water cannon deployed, their protest signs were not busted up and nobody was hit by pepper spray. Which seems odd.

Trendy New Psychosis Alert : Doctors Brace For Wave Of "Climate Change Mental Illness"

Troubled by the Uncle Dave and his pit bull abuse you suffered in your childhood? Haunted by your grandfather's suicide at his 50th wedding anniversary while you were raising a toast? Crippled by your love-hate relationship with Jesus and memories of the Catholic priests who 'baptised' you? Still struggling with revelations that your father was a hermaphrodite 1970s porn movie queen? Stressed into locking yourself away forever by your inexplicable fear of being eaten by paving stones and attacked by bus shelters?

Pffft. You're all a bunch of whiny wussbags. And so far behind the times. There's a new anxiety in town, major celebrities already have it and if you're not already telling friends you are "stressed beyond belief about the climate change" you will soon sound like an imitator, instead of an innovator.

From the Herald Sun :

Climate change is not only bad news for the environment, it also threatens our mental health, a doctor warns.

Grant Blashki, from the University of Melbourne, warned that global warming was making many people anxious.

"People with depression and anxiety have a low threshold to taking on the negative information about climate change . . . which feeds into a hopelessness about the future."

Dr Blashki will call for healthcare professionals to brace for a wave of climate change mental illness in a speech to mark today's World Health Day.

What a shock. Mind tinkerers have found a fresh branch of depression to exploit, a low grade anxiety to market and pontificate upon. And it's trendy and socially responsible. Gold!

Are you suffering from Warm Gore Psychosis (WGP)?

Are you troubled by suddenly summery days and your neighbours' inability to turn off all their lights before they go to bed?

Do you find yourself sheeting sweat in the veggie shop while repeatedly asking the confused owner how many 'Carbon Kilometres' the pear you're clutching in your damp fist has racked up?

Are you reconsidering starting a family because you've already calculated how much carbon your planned for two children will produce in their lifetimes and you can't sleep, so riddled by pre-emptive carbon-guilt?

Help. We need help. Perhaps in the shape of a pill.

Won't some pharmaceutical company please come up with a new anti-anxiety medication designed to specifically target the areas in the brain responsible for this apparently eagerly anticipated "wave of climate change mental illness"?

Yes. Of course they will.

But this, it's all the wrong attitude.

If you instead look forward to climate change induced chaos and destruction instead, and do it without feeling any guilt or empathy, then you only face some disappoint if The Warmolypse doesn't live up to its mega-disaster-movie-level potential.

There's plenty of carbon-guilt, climate change anxiety and Warm Gore Psychosis to be seen nearly everyday in newspapers' letter sections and on most online comment boards attached to dooming reports on how Mother Nature is preparing to clean our clocks.

One of the worst recent examples of Warm Gore Psychosis I've seen is this travel story about 'going green' in the Blue Mountains. The writer spends almost one third of her large New York Times large story fretting about the carbon footprint of her flight from the US to Australia :

Of course, one could make the argument that the moment I chose Australia (a blow-your-carbon-footprint-off-the-map sort of destination), I committed my first serious environmental crime of the trip.

According to one carbon calculator, my round-trip journey between London and Sydney alone (about 21,000 miles) would produce an outlandish 5.6 tons of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of leaving all the lights on in my home all day and night for two years and six months.

With such an earth-shattering (literally) equation staring back at me, it was hard not to think twice before flying.

Awesome. a New York Times travel writer is so crippled by her footprint-of-destruction carbon guilt that she considers not traveling at all. But wait, carbon offsetting saves the day :

(Justin Francis of Responsible Travel) went on to assuage my guilt by telling me that one in 12 jobs in the world is in tourism, and if everyone decided not to travel, the result would be a global recession that would undoubtedly hit the developing countries hardest, and not just their economies. (In October 2007, the United Nations World Tourism Organization estimated that 46 of the 49 poorest countries in the world rely on international tourism as their primary source of foreign exchange earnings.)

“Tourism also keeps many cultures from going extinct,” he said. “Often rituals and traditions are passed down between generations primarily because tourists come to see them.”

I vowed to learn something about the Aborigines if I went to Australia.

So what did this New York Times travel writer learn about Australian Aborigines? Just one thing :

Aborigines lived in these caves as recently as 100 years ago, isolated from the European settlers who were colonizing the rest of New South Wales.

She learned lots about how Qantas found a new way to charge $25-$30 more in Gore taxes, supposedly offsetting the traveller's and their own carbon output, but not much about the Aborigines.

Obviously learning how the NYTimes travel writer found a way to "assuage my guilt"
over actually traveling as part of her travel writing job was far more important than learning that within a short distance from her Blackheath eco-lodge can be found numerous examples of ancient Aboriginal art and culture.

I have to agree with The Editor of GrodsCorp that this concrete monstrosity must rank as the most craptacular of all the Big Aussie Icons. And the competition is fierce :




Actually, it begins to look kind of sinister if you stare at it too long.

The Big Koala is for sale. Behind the mysterious roller door is a souvenir booth.

UPDATE : My mistake. The 14 metre tall Giant Koala isn't made from concrete, it's composed of cold cast bronze and fibreglass. You can buy it for only $220,000. It would look magnificent in any backyard, looming menacingly over the neighbourhood.

Sir Les Patterson On Kevin "The Dentist" Rudd



I'll come back and do some more on the theme of 'The Death Of The Aussie Bloke' that is explored in this story from an elitist limey rag, but for now the opinions of Sir Les Patterson on the state of the Australian male as represented by PM Kevin Rudd must be heard :

‘There are far too many mealy-mouthed poofters in high places in Australia now. It’s a bit of a poof-ocracy these days."

Barry Humphries channels Sir Les :

Humphries, who was invited to a Downing Street function during Rudd’s visit (to London), added that Sir Les regarded Rudd as “a clean-cut sort of fellow. Les calls him ‘the Dentist’. He looks just like a dentist, peering critically into the mouth of the nation, saying, ‘Who did this work?’

Warm Beers

What I expect to be the second to last chapter of the free online novel ED Day : Dead Sydney is now up. Here's a chunk of it :

Johnny didn’t pace, he just stood there, in that doorway, filling it up, talking in a calm voice, as though he was set for whatever fate was about to dish up to him.

“There’s beers,” he said. “But they’re a bit warm.”

“I think I like my beer warm, now,” I said, and it was true.

Johnny grabbed a couple of bottles of VB from a half-empty case on the floor. He tossed me one.

"Cheers to you," I said. "Yeah, good luck on your journey, brother."

“Good luck with…what you have to do.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes and drank our warm beers. The sun was returning, a huge heat lamp slowly being turned up. The blast of sun on my skin made me want to go back to sleep.

"Why do you think we made it?" Johnny asked me. "Why us? Millions probably died here. Why did we get to live?'

It's the question all survivors ask themselves, but once they cut God out of the answer nobody could ever come up with a good reason.

You can read ED Day from Chapter One here.

Liberals Pray To The Tubes Of The Internets For Salvation

Mind-boggling. The senior ranks of the Liberal Party know less about the internets and the series of tubes that carry it around the world than they knew about the detail of their own WorkChoices policies.

In fact, most of the Liberal Party's old timers don't even know what those boxes with TVs on their secretaries' desks are all about :

Christopher Pyne, Malcolm Turnbull and Joe Hockey were the only senior former Howard government ministers who could use a computer, a Liberal party source said.

The Libs have apparently woken up to the fact that their online election campaign was beyond woeful and they are not digitally connecting with younger conservatives. Better late than
never :

The Liberal Party is preparing a major internet blitz to reinvigorate itself amid plunging membership and an ageing support base.

Senior party sources said the Coalition "failed abysmally" to fully recognise the importance of the internet during the 2007 federal election campaign, and that John Howard's stilted YouTube appearances did more harm than good.

"There was a complete cultural misunderstanding of the internet at headquarters," a senior insider said. "In lots of respects, Howard's YouTube appearances underlined the problem. They are supposed to be spontaneous chats - not sitting in a stuffy study giving a prepared speech."

The Liberal Party (those who know how to work a computer anyway) are apparently hoping to do some digital trumping on PM Rudd's 2020 summit.

In what could be the Liberal Party's answer to the Federal Government's 2020 summit, The Sun Herald has learnt that a new Liberal interactive online forum will be unveiled at the Victorian State Council meeting later this month.

The forum would allow members to have a "continuing online conversation" with party elders and to engage younger conservatives.

Members will be able to access chat rooms to discuss policy papers and key issues such as housing affordability, the environment, national security and tax.

Liberal federal president Alan Stockdale said a similar idea was being explored at the national level.

Christopher Pyne, one of the few senior Liberals who know how to use a computer, says his party must work some magic over the internet if they want to become 'a modern political party.'

Mandatory computer and internet training for the offline Liberals will become a priority.

"The difference is between grudgingly accepting the internet and embracing it as a real campaign tool; I'm confident the party is now moving to embrace it," he said.

Grudgingly accepting the internet? Millions of young and old Australians now spend more time online at home than they do watching TV or listening to the radio and they're in the process of "grudgingly" accepting it?

Expect a spam mail in your inbox soon inviting you to watch Brendan Nelson working on his motorbike and practising his guitar playing live on webcam.

Fingerprint ID Scans Forced On School Children

Parents Called "Idiots" For Refusing Biometric Data Collection Of Their Children

Why not just take DNA swabs of the students instead? Then the schools can have their students biometrically profiled to find out what their potential future levels of aggression, illness and classroom misbehaviour may be. Pre-emptive expulsions!

From news.com.au :

A Sydney high school has been accused of intimidating students into having their fingerprints scanned for a new attendance monitoring system, and branding parents who object as "idiots".

Parents of students at Ku-ring-gai High School in Sydney's north say their children have been bullied into taking part in a trial of the scheme introduced this week.

According to a principal's note sent home with students last Friday, parents were permitted to opt out by sending an "exemption" letter to the school.

Parents told The Australian yesterday their children were told their fingers would be scanned anyway, and data later deleted, only if there were still objections.

Alison Page said her daughter in Year 10 and other students who carried exemption letters were told "their parents were idiots for not agreeing". She said they were asked again if they would have the scans. "They were told to go home and tell their parents they were worrying about nothing," she added.

Ms Page said her other daughter in Year 12 was among students required to provide finger scans without notice after an English exam on Tuesday. Her daughter had an exemption letter but had not been allowed to take it into the room.

"They were not allowed to leave the room until it was done," she said. "They were told it could be deleted later if they didn't want it done."

Parent Chris Gurman said his daughter Alex was also told she could not leave the exam room until her fingerprint was taken.

"My daughter was the only one who refused," Mr Gurman said. "She's read 1984. When she refused to co-operate, a teacher let her out of the room."

Alex Gurman, 17, said they were told: "'If any of your stupid parents have any worries about this we will talk about it later.' I felt like crying, I felt like I was being forced to do something I didn't want to do, it was very confronting."

NSW Education Minister John Della Bosca said a small number of schools had introduced fingerprint scanning with the support of parents, adding it was not a government nor department initiative.

So who's paying for the fingerprint scanners? The schools? Did the schools hold fund-raising chocolate drives? Or were the scanners 'donated'?

It starts with fingerprint scanners. Once every school has brought a few scanners they will be found to be inneffective. Or not effective enough at collecting biometric data. DNA collection and state/national biometric databases of school students will then be introduced.

Neither the NSW Labor Government, or its education department, has made any formal announcement about the rolling out of biometric data collection programs for school children.

Presumably they were waiting to see how loud or outraged the reaction from parents would be when they found out it was already going on.

So far, the reaction has been fairly subdued.

The school children may as well get used to it. Within a decade, having your implanted ID chip, or biometric data, scanned every time you enter a school, train station, shopping mall or night club will be standard, every day stuff.

Unless you refuse ID chips and allowing your biometric data to be collected and datamined, of course. Then you will become a non-person and be refused access to just about everywhere.

Incredibly sad and beautiful paintings by prisoners on the walls of cells and exercise yards at Western Australia's infamous, and haunting, Fremantle Goal.

Gangland Serial Killer Likens Himself To Soldier In A War

Carl Williams killed a lot of people, and he's proud of what he did.

The Melbourne gangland war of the late 1990s and early 2000s was a real war, Williams insists in two extraordinary letters to his mother, written from the prison where he is now serving 35 years. He says he was fighting to protect the lives of his family, and himself.

Some excerpts :

"Yes I did what I did. I am guilty of defending my loved ones from being killed..."

"I killed or played a role in killing people who were planning to kill me and for that I have lost my freedom for the best part of my life. Everyday soldiers have to kill the enemy, otherwise the enemy will kill them."

"Just for a moment please try putting yourself in my shoes. It was my 29th birthday. As far as I was concerned I didn't have a worry in the world. That is until I went and met someone whom I thought was a friend of mine [Mark Moran] only to end up getting shot by him and his brother … because they were money hungry, greedy control freaks who I wouldn't bow down too [sic]."

"From the day I was shot my life changed forever and in the end those two are dead and the price I have to pay for standing up for myself is the loss of my freedom from the young age of 33 years old until the ripe old age of 71."

"I am the first to admit that I wish that I could turn back time and what happened never did … although I must confess I am certainly not ashamed of the lengths I was forced to take to protect myself and my loved ones.

"I am no saint … but the people I killed were far worse people than I will ever be … I never killed or harmed any innocent people."

"I was in a kill or be killed situation … I will always be able to see and talk to my loved ones … and that is alot [sic] better than the scumbags who shot me can do.

"I will always be able to look in the mirror and be very proud of the person I see."

Police believe Williams was connected to the deaths of up to 12 men...

Williams is none too happy about the way he is portrayed in the Underbelly TV series :

"I don't mind them telling the truth about me, but telling lies and painting me out like some kind of dickhead who is brain dead - well that's just bullshit."

Yes, bullshit indeed. Imagine portraying a speed-dealing multiple murderer as a brain dead dickhead?

You can read the Carl Williams letters in full here and here.